I walked a whole seven blocks to get from my house to the Sprint WiMax Press Conference in Baltimore earlier today and it was well worth the walk. The 4G technology is impressive… and it worked… and extremely well might I add. The event organizers did a tremendous job by turning a “press conference” into a “media event”.

When I arrived and signed in, I was given a folder with various literature, a USB Flash stick with press releases, bios and information and a Flip Mino video camera. Awesome! All the pictures and video in this post were taken with my new camera, courtesy of XOHM/WiMax (thanks)!

The venue was outdoors, on a raised stage and under a tent- the weather was nice and it worked out really well. I snapped a picture as I prepared for the “important people” to take the stage:

The speaking agenda was Barry West (CTO, XOHM), Sean Maloney (VP Marketing, Intel) and Dan Hesse (CEO, Sprint Nextel). Barry West stood out as a particularly engaging speaker who brought out a fun, down to earth style to the stage.

Mr. West opened up by acknowledging they were launching on one of the worst days in stock market history and after showing a brief promotional video exclaimed, “I’m Barry West and I approve this message.” It was funny and the crowd responded.

A few key points from his presentation:

• Baltimore was first because of how well it represents the average American city and because it imposes some challenges (water, brick buildings) that can be overcome and applied elsewhere.
• WiMax is an “Open Network” that will “Change The Way the Internet is accessed.”
• It will connect people on “New kinds of devices, New kinds of Gadgets.” (we’re eager to see these devices and gadgets)
• WiMax is not only FASTER but also CHEAPER

I was really impressed with the marketing standpoint that Sprint is taking with XOHM. They acknowledged that most consumers don’t care how something works… they just care that it works! Most consumers know what WiFi is and are aware of the constraints of HotSpots. So… that’s why WiMax is “A Hotspot As Big As A City.”

It makes sense and I think the concept will resonate with consumers… as long as they are able to get the message out there. They’re competing with Comcast who has a HUGE market share (and Verizon). They’ll be testing in-store sales, mall kiosks, telesales, door to door sales and other methods to find what marketing/sales methods are most effective. More on that later.

But the day was about DEVICES, Barry West proclaimed… and that means new Notebooks from Lenovo, Acer, Asus and Toshiba with WiMax chips embedded. A ZTE USB Dongle, Nokia N810 Internet Tablet and 20+ more devices are on the way. These products will be available at XOHM.com, Sprint.com, Amazon.com, NewEgg.com and in 6 Baltimore area BestBuy kiosks.

Most Ridiculous/Funniest comment of the entire day: After listing where consumers can purchase, Barry West admits, “I’m not sure why you would buy anything with the New Egg.”

HA!

Then Dan Hesse took the stage with a completely different tone/approach. Whereas Barry West gave off more of a speaking one-on-one vibe, Dan Hesse got all Barack Obama with his public speaking skills. But does anyone else think he looks like Brian Billick (formerly of the Baltimore Ravens):

He said that if there was a single “Killer App” for mobile it would be video, which is a notorious bandwidth hog. WiMax overcomes that obstacle. He said it will open up a world of possibilities for other apps… and it really, truly will.

Plus… just think of the SPEED. A mobile device where it uses 4G when available and DOWNshifts to 3G. That’s right, 3G is a downgrade. Sheesh… technology moves fast. He closed by saying he read the book “BLack & Blue” about the Balitmore Orioles beating the Brooklyn Dodgers for the MLB pennant in 1966: “The Orioles won’t be bringing a championship to Baltimore this year, but Sprint is…”

I’m not sure how many in the crowd were from Baltimore besides me… I’m a big baseball fan so I liked the closing but imagine it seemed odd to others.

All the execs then got together for a picture where Barry Water did the formality of “cutting a riboon”. But just before he cut it, as a few people rushed to take last minute pics, he posed and said, “a special one for Verizon.” Nice… nice…

Then it was onto the product demonstrations. Right out of the gate, they had little kiosks set up with various devices that allowed you to test the speeds of WiMax:

Then, right next to those kiosks, there was a line forming for a luxury van tour. It drove you into the harbor area so you could test how WiMax worked in a vehicle, with reps answering questions in front of a big screen during the tour. The van never went over 25 or 30 MPH so its hard to tell how it would perform on the highway.

From there we walked a block to the “In Home Experience” which was pretty neat. They rented out a Row Home that overlooked the Harbor and converted it into a WiMax display house that had notebooks set up with friendly folks there to answer questions:

The deck on the back overlooked the waterfront where you could see Water Taxis coming and going, not to mention one of my favorite local restaurants (Shucker’s) directly next door:

Speaking of Water Taxis, that was yet ANOTHER experience that Sprint offered. Get on board for the XOHM Water Commuter Experience. Yup, it even worked on the water. And again, very well might I add.

So they offered multiple venues for learning about WiMax and did all three: Van, In-Home and Water. That was the biggest let down of the event… they kind of just said, “Here is a laptop… see how fast it is now? That’s because it has XOHM.”

So much hard work and technology goes into building a huge 4G network like WiMax but unfortunately, the network is just the guy in the middle that doesn’t get any love. The hardware is on one end, the applications and web are on the other and the network connects the two… but its compareably more boring than having a cool gadget to play with or awesome app to utilize. Fortunately for us, Sprint and partners are taking care of the “boring” stuff so that the “cool stuff” works faster than ever before, enabling a new breed of applications that would previously been either impossible or unbareably slow.

So exactly how was is WiMax? One gentlemen compared it on the spot to his iPhone 3G and it absolutely blew the iPhone out of the water. The down stream was consistently registering 5+ megs on land, car and sea. This thing is blazing fast.

What is more exciting is that Sprint supposedly has the spectrum to cover more than half of the world’s population with this 4G network. Even in areas where there aren’t ANY kind of wires – we’re talking straight up tribal – WiMax has the potential to allow mobile devices to access the internet at 4G speeds. The New Clearwire has already poured 3.2 Billion dollars of capital into this project and it will take an estimated $5 Billion to bring everything to fruition. Time to hold a fundraiser!

There is no doubt that WiMax is faster than the alternatives available now… MUCH faster.  Combine that with the mobility that WiMax offers – it truly is a city wide (and beyond) hotspot – and you could say that WiMax doesn’t even HAVE any alternatives.

Barry West would agree with that statement… and he did during his presentation saying that no company has the infrastructure to even CREATE a competitve answer to WiMax in the next 2 years.

But the competitors and challenges won’t be easy to overcome for Sprint and WiMax. Regardless of the fact that they have a clearly superior product/service, the market share and brand recognition that Comcast currently enjoys will take a ton of education to combat. Combine that with the current economic situation where people don’t want to HEAR about more ways they can spend money and the waters could prove to be turbulent.

Fortunately for Sprint and WiMax, the market also tends to reward companies who build truly innovative devices. And with 20+ products soon on the market with WiMax enabled chips and the likes of Sprint, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, ZTE and ZyXEL behind it there is virtually no way it can or will fail… unless for some odd reason, huge volumes of consumers eventually bog down the network.

But then again, that would be a good problem to have, would it not.